24 September 2013

Terror Tunnel

There are all sorts of attractions, parks, restaurants,
resorts and unattached concepts that never made it off the drawing board or out
of the model shop. When it comes to Disney’s Hollywood Studios, previously
known as Disney-MGM Studios, everyone from Andrew Lloyd Weber to David
Copperfield had experiences that could’ve, should’ve, but didn’t make it into
the park. There were no grander ideas, however, than those tied to the face of
Disney-MGM Studios during its formative years, Roger Rabbit.

In fact, Roger wasn’t going to have just a single
attraction, he was going to have a whole land that was going to be known as
Roger Rabbit’s Hollywood. Picture Roger’s influence on Toontown in Disneyland,
but ramped up to an epic level. Baby Herman would have been given his own
attraction, as would have Benny the Cab, and another attraction would have sent
guests on a tour of Toontown. Perhaps the marquee attraction, the weenie of the
land if you will, would have been this high flying roller coaster.

Based upon Roller Coaster Rabbit, the 1990 short that was
released in theaters as the opening act to Dick Tracy, the ride would have sent
guests through an antic-ridden wooden roller coaster. In the short, Roger and
Herman make their way through a very dangerous state fair in central Florida
and end up on the highly suspect coaster.

It’s likely that the argument over controlling interest in
Roger and his shorts had something to do with hampering Roger’s spread further
into the park and the entertainment industry as a whole. In the end though, the
roller coaster and Roger Rabbit’s Hollywood were both shelved when Sunset
Boulevard and The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror were given the green light.